Last year, U.S. eCommerce revenue set a record of $3.34 billion on Black Friday – a substantial 21.6 percent year-over-year growth rate. What does this mean to eCommerce? More people are increasingly ditching the old way of going to a physical store for their holiday purchases. Consumers are actively spending more time online to search Black Friday promotions. If you are running an online business, you’d better have best Black Friday marketing ideas ready now to boost great sales this season. How will you shift that increasing traffic of online users searching for that perfect holiday item? Take a look at our list of Black Friday marketing ideas that will definitely help you curate a successful promotion, get the attention of the increasing traffic of holiday shoppers this Black Friday and make great revenue.

1 – Send a Black Friday email marketing blast to your customers

Begin your plan by email blasting your past and potential online shoppers ahead of the influx of marketing especially when your competitors are still busy figuring out what to do. There is no doubt social media is thriving but email marketing is a time-tested strategy to expand both your sales and your customer base. Custora reported that 25.1% of sales during Black Friday promotion season has originated from email marketing, which makes it the biggest driver for Black Friday trades. On the other hand, an online retailer instigated an email marketing campaign which saw a 330% increase in revenue per email sent.

Make this tactic even more successful –A catchy subject line. Your email subject line is a vital component to your campaign’s success as this is the first thing that your targeted audience will read. If you won’t catch your reader’s attention with your subject line, then it is most likely to expect an unopened email.Timing is everything. Schedule your emails based on time zones or peak of online email users. Email marketing is like nurturing a seed to grow.Save the date. Include a personalized “Add this event to your calendar” section linking your website. You don’t want them to miss your Black Friday promotions.Not everyone is created equal. Create separate email campaigns to your past and potential customers, since they both have different needs and wants. To further illustrate: – Past customers are more on a loyalty program strategy like offering discounts or freebies. – Potential customers are more on a persuasion strategy like limited time offer deals.

2 – Boost Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sales via Social Media

A 2015 study revealed that there were a 3.8 million social posts mentioning Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Now that’s an enormous amount of online shoppers to ignore. Planning your Black Friday social media marketing is both exciting and challenging since everything is real time. You see what people are saying on a millisecond and they expect you to act swiftly. Your social media posts should vary before, during, and even after Black Friday or Cyber Monday to boost sales.

3 – Generate excitement through a Flash Sale

A flash sale is a generally short period of time promotion. It is an exciting way to create hype and boost sale before the actual Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It can be few hours before the expected event or a day or two is also a good idea. A flash sale testing conducted saw a 51% growth in traffic, 50% rise in conversion rate and a whopping 236% increase in revenue. Flash sales can be tricky so you need to carefully set your limitations and conditions before considering to use this approach.